Wells Fargo keeps pay for CEO flat at $19.3M

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) - Wells Fargo kept its pay for CEO John Stumpf unchanged at $19.3 million last year, saying he has led the company well and reduced risk.

A company filing on Tuesday shows that Stumpf received base pay of $2.8 million, stock awards of $12.5 million, and incentive pay of $4 million, which was awarded last month based on his performance last year.

The San Francisco-based company says it set his incentive pay after taking into account a record profit last year of $21.9 billion, as well as other goals such as managing its risk and cutting costs while looking for new ways to increase revenue.

Wells Fargo & Co. plans to hold its annual shareholder meeting April 29 in San Antonio. Items to be voted on include a shareholder proposal to separate the chairman and CEO jobs, both of which are currently held by Stumpf.

The Associated Press formula calculates an executive's total compensation during the last fiscal year by adding salary, bonuses, perks, above-market interest that the company pays on deferred compensation and the estimated value of stock and stock options awarded during the year. The AP formula does not count changes in the present value of pension benefits. That makes the AP total slightly different in most cases from the total reported by companies to the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The value that a company assigned to an executive's stock and option awards for 2013 was the present value of what the company expected the awards to be worth to the executive over time. Companies use one of several formulas to calculate that value. However, the number is just an estimate, and what an executive ultimately receives will depend on the performance of the company's stock in the years after the awards are granted. Most stock compensation programs require an executive to wait a specified amount of time to receive shares or exercise options.